Photography by Nasir Hamid

January, 2015

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Whenever I want to test out any tungsten balanced film I tend to either head for the Ashmolean Museum or to Clements & Church – the tailor’s on Little Clarendon Street and sometimes I will visit both places during the same lunch break as I did last week when I wanted to test out some Kodak Vision 3 500T motion picture film. This is the exact same film that is used by movie studios in Hollywood and around the world. I really like the colours you get with this film and although it takes longer to develop than regular colour film (because you have to remove the black remjet coating from the non-emulsion side of the film), with extra time and care it can be done with just hot water and a sponge which is what I used on this roll.

Here are some medium format shots I made during my recent lunch time session with Tori. I previously posted a couple of Fujiroid bleached neg shots here. The format for these shots was 6×9 which is one of my favourite medium format aspect ratios but I only have one camera that was designed to use that format and these shots reminded me that I don’t use it enough. You get 8 shots of 6×9 on a 120 size roll so it’s not a format for the trigger happy. For this shoot I decided to use fresh film stock for a change and while I can’t see a huge difference compared to some of my expired film shots I do think that the contrast was handled better on the contrasty back lit shots. We were a bit rushed in this session because I wanted to use medium format, 35mm and Fuji pack film all within 25mins which is not easy when you’ve got lots of people moving around during lunch time and you have to keep stopping to wait for a clear background but Tori was very patient despite the cold weather and we got everything done in time.

Towards the end of the Christmas break I did some photography at Magdalen College to test out a Russian lens I had mounted to use with my Speed Graphic 5×4 camera. How appropriate that I would meet up with a Russian flickr contact of mine who was visiting Oxford with his girlfriend. Along with my Speed Graphic I took my Leica M2 which I used for these shots. The light was fading fast but the 400 speed of Ilford XP2 was just fine. There are some shots from this session still to come which I made on Kodak Vision 3 500T motion picture film.

Today was a glorious sunny winters day here in Oxford and I made good use of it by doing some photography with Tori during my lunch break. I had three different film cameras with me today and here are two shots from the Polaroid Land Camera I took (the b&w shots are drying in the darkroom overnight so they’ll follow at a later time). There’s something really nice about winter sunshine and how it can make colours pop, it can also be very harsh and contrasty so it’s a nice challenge to look at how the light is falling on your subject and how the smallest of movements can mean the difference between nice and not so nice. Tori was incredibly easy to photograph and I hope we can do some more photography with different cameras and film. There is zero retouching on these two images, no Photoshop fakery, no filters, no plugins, just straight scans from the film.

These two shots were made on Fuji FP100-C instant pack film that expired 9 years ago. When you store it carefully and pay attention to how you expose it it’s capable of creating some fantastic results. I tend to underexpose it by a stop which results in a darker print but a nice negative that can be recovered with bleaching the black carbon layer off. The negatives are much sharper than the prints and you also get 2 stops of more detail in the shadows compared to the print.

Spilt is a short film written and directed by Alvin Yu and I was asked if I’d like to do some portrait photography while they were filming in Oxford a couple of weeks ago. Due to timing conflicts I was only able to make it to set on their final day of filming after it had gotten dark outside so I made these portraits indoors with the available light (a bulb hanging from the ceiling in the hallway). The crew were setting up for a shot so I had to work quickly, one frame on each person, no re-takes and no second shot. What you see here is the entire roll of film, uncropped. Apologies to any crew members that I didn’t manage to include, hopefully I’ll get you on another project.

Here are a few more shots from the first time out with my Industar 210mm large format lens. I only took six sheets of film with me and I used two sheets on one of the shots because the light was changing and I decided to try out a greater depth of field on the second sheet. I ended up preferring the light on the building in the first exposure so that’s the one I’ve posted here.

Here are some of the first test shots made with my Industar 210mm Russian large format lens. I bought this lens back in July last year but it took me a while to get it mounted on a lens panel to use with my Speed Graphic. Finally the wait is over. The light was fading when I made these exposures and they were made at the slowest shutter speed on my Speed Graphic which is 1/30th with the lens fully open at f4.5. I pushed the film a little in the developer to try to lift the shadows but there doesn’t seem to be anything there to bring out. I’m pleased with these results and can’t wait to do some more at a closer focussing distance. I made a few other shots which will follow another time – I left them drying in the darkroom.

This afternoon I visited Magdalen College to test out a new (old) lens I recently fitted to a lens board for my Speed Graphic and here is the first test shot made on Fuji FP-100C instant pack film. I also took some b&w sheet film with me and those shots will follow at a later time. The beauty of FP-100C is being able to bleach the black carbon backing from the back and ending up with an almost large format sized negative. This shot was made late in the afternoon as the light was fading and I used the slowest shutter speed on my Speed Graphic (1/30th) knowing that the print would be a little on the under-exposed side but also knowing that the negative gives you an extra 2 stops of exposure. It’s nice to get two shots for the price of one – the only instant film that does.

My very first visit to Cambridge was in August last year. Up until then I’d always been put off going there because I’m not a huge fan of driving and there isn’t a fast/easy route there from Oxford but when a fellow film photographer friend of mine offered to drive, I was happy to tag along for the trip. My first impression was that Cambridge had better shopping compared to Oxford but from a visual point of view I think Oxford easily wins without a doubt. It seems like the only way to see much of the colleges is by travelling along the river but if that’s not what you’re interested in doing you still have to put up with being hassled every minute by people selling boat trips and punts for hire. I’ve never seen anything like it. Apart from that I had a great time walking the streets of somewhere new, observing life and the comings and goings.

At the end of November I went into town on a Saturday morning to do some photography and here are some images that I made. This was a couple of days after Black Friday and shoppers were out looking for bargains in the run up to Christmas. It was great to come across a breakdance crew busting some moves. When I was younger I remember seeing breakdance crews in town, laying out their square of lino to dance on, boom box blasting out tunes to attract the attention of passers by. It’s nice to see the current generation keeping the tradition alive.

These shots are from a few days ago during a photo walk around town with a fellow film photographer friend of mine, Chris. Neither of us had anticipated the icy cold wind that had come in and after braving it up until the light started to fade we decided to head to the Natural History Museum which is not only one of my favourite places to photograph but it’s also guaranteed to be warm 🙂 I made a mistake with this roll because it came in a batch of mixed expired films and had no box. At a glance the roll looked like Fuji Neopan 100 Acros but it was actually Neopan 400. I wanted to test Acros pushed 1 stop in Xtol developer but because this was an ISO 400 film I ended up over-exposing it by 1 stop and then pushed it 1 stop in the developer. I’m amazed I got anything usable from the roll and it’s a credit to the latitude of film.

A couple of weeks before Christmas I went into town on a sunny Saturday morning to photograph the Christmas market that had been set up on Broad Street and just generally see if there was much going on. I also wanted to test out some Kodak Gold film which I haven’t used in decades and after seeing lots of fantastic results online from other photographers I felt that a sunny winter morning would be good conditions for testing. As it turned out I found it difficult to do much photography because of the volume of shoppers around but I did manage to do some photography and here’s a selection.